I like to visit Earth sometimes; I find
the too-brief lives and simple cares a change
from the infinities in which we range,
we who now live unbodied in vast Mind.

I love to watch the children at a zoo,
careering up and down, shrieking to see
the strange lives in the weird captivity
they also share…and as their parents do.

Visiting in – of course – a human guise,
I can be young or old, female or male;
sex, power, seduction never seem to stale,
to give gifts seems fair pay for all my lies.

Sailors and tourists visit and then leave;
it’s best their hosts have something to believe.

*****

This sonnet was published in the current Alchemy Spoon, which had ‘Gift’ as its theme. It is one of a series of ‘Voices From The Future’ sonnets which I wrote in an attempt to present more diversity than the bleakness that Maryann Corbett had identified in my writing of what I see coming. Others are ‘Ultimate Control’ (Pulsebeat), ‘Exiled Leader’ (Star*Line) and ‘Dreaming of Flying’ (unpublished). Well, some people may find them all bleak, in the same way that Victorians would have found a description of today to be bleak; but what with travel, the Internet, dentistry… I’d rather be alive now than in the past. Similarly, I look forward to the future, no matter how much change is involved.

“London Zoo, Human Exhibit” by fhwrdh is licensed under CC BY 2.0.